The present invention relates to a storage system including cluster systems in a virtual machine environment, more particularly to resource provisioning and management of a cluster system in a virtual machine environment.
Many companies have embraced the virtual machine environment in recent years. Its usage allows physical machines, e.g., servers, to be consolidated into fewer machines and thereby reduce hardware cost. Some estimates that companies often manage more virtual machines than actual physical machines. The number of virtualized physical servers, i.e., physical servers that run virtual machine environment, is expected to increase even more in coming years. The cost of information technology (IT) platform management has been rising with the greater adoption of virtual machine environment since the management of virtual machines tends to be more complicated than physical machines. This is particularly true in a storage system that has numerous components operating together to provide fine-tuned and robust user experience. A storage system typically includes one or more storage arrays, a fabric network including a storage network and a LAN, and a plurality of hosts. One type of commonly used storage network is Storage Area Network (SAN).
A conventional method of managing a cluster in a virtual machine environment in a storage system requires multiple communications among many IT administrators, such as, a server administrator, a network administrator, a virtual machine administrator and a storage administrator. For example, if one or more storage volumes (LU) have to be shared within the physical servers in the same cluster, the server administrator and the network administrator need to exchange system attributes such as which HBA of which machine, which storage ports to use, redundant I/O paths, zoning and so on. The network administrator and the storage administrator need to exchange system attributes for a particular zone, e.g., the storage ports, the LUNs (LU numbers), the WWPNs (World Wide Port Name), and other attributes that are associated with that zone. The server administrator and the storage administrator need to communicate with each other information such as LUN masking, LUNs (LU numbers) and so on. The virtual machine administrator needs to provide information on which VLAN (Virtual LAN) should be used by which virtual machine, which volume should be used by which virtual disk and so on.
The communication between the network administrator and the storage administrator is particularly complicated and time consuming to manage a cluster system in a virtual machine environment. The server or virtual machine administrator, for example, often needs to ask the network administrator to create one or more VLAN on specific ports when a cluster is created, a host is added to a cluster, a host is deleted from a cluster, a host is replaced from a cluster, or the like. Normally, these communications are performed by sending emails or exchanging spreadsheets. Such a “manual” or “non-automated” method adds a significant administrative burden and thus cost.
The server/virtual machine administrator and the storage administrator experience a similar administrative burden. The server or virtual machine administrator, for example, needs to ask the storage administrator to create one or more logical volumes for a specific cluster, on a specific storage array and port. They need the WWPN addresses of an initiator (host) and a target (storage array) in order to configure a zone on specific switches. These procedures are often needed when a cluster is created, a host is added to a cluster, a host is deleted from a cluster, a host is replaced from a cluster, or the like. These communications typically are performed by sending email requests and providing spreadsheets, or the like. Because of this multiple layers of time consuming communication and coordination among various IT administrators, the deployment and management of cluster systems in a virtual machine environment (or “virtual cluster systems”) impose high administrative cost and burden on IT administrators.